Should I go into my Rant about why a high quality interface can double or triple the sales of a good or decent application?  Should I explain yet again that perception is reality in the customer’s mind, even if perception is not reality?  Why haven’t the majority of app developers caught onto this simple truth?  Wow them first with the look and feel of your app, get them hooked because it’s a great app.  Do both right and you’ve got a winner.

This past weekend a good friend of mine posted a picture on his facebook profile of an HDR pic and I thought it was impressive! At least impressive for the simple fact that it came from in iPhone 3GS camera if for no other.

The picture is of a building in the Fort Worth area, taken in what appears to be a fairly bright day.  Amazing I thought to myself!  I immediately shot my friend Adam an email asking which iPhone application he used to take this excellent picture.

To my surprise it was Pro HDR!  I immediately went to the App store and grabbed it.  My impression of the App was still the same.  I didn’t like the interface, but after taking a few pictures, I did like the results!

I set out taking a few pictures and I love this application!  The application itself is fairly simplistic with just enough features and options to be powerful, but not overly complex.  To take an HDR photo with Pro HDR you simply take two pictures, a slightly over exposed picture and a slightly under exposed picture.  The application takes both pictures (or lets you import them).  During the photographing process you simply select a light area and a dark area and let Pro HDR stitch the two together.

As you can see in the picture of the pool in gallery below, a steady hand is a must as the stitching software isn’t perfect.  However, I find the results to be amazing.  You’re not going to win any awards with an iPhone photo, but you can really do some pretty amazing stuff.  Go get it!

Graphics Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Usability Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Results Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Link to iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/pro-hdr/id347104281?mt=8
Link to Publisher: http://www.eyeappsllc.com/

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Real Solitaire HD Free had graphics, sound and realism that rival even the best PC or Mac based solitaire games… at a cost of zero!  However, that free came with a hitch that I found to be unacceptable.

Real Solitaire HD Free has an ad banner at the bottom of the screen.  That ad banner is ginourmous.  That ad banner is intrusive.  That ad banner seem designed to make you accidentally click on it when moving your cards, since your cards will cover the banner after just a few deep.

If that weren’t enough, the banner continually advertises for you to upgrade to the full version.  If even that weren’t enough each and every menu of the game asks you to upgrade to the full version!

If the authors of this game hadn’t went out of their way to push the full version on me, and just let me enjoy the demo I would be the owner of Real Solitaire HD paid.  But they lost me as a customer, because if they pulled this on me as a trial user what will they do with the full version?  Hijack it to sell me another paid app?  No thanks.

Gameplay Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Graphics Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Usability Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Overall Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

Link to iTunes: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/real-solitaire-free-for-ipad/id373942073?mt=8
Link to Publisher: http://www.edgerift.com/realsolitaire/

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On Thursday, June 24th I woke up at 5:45AM.  If you know me, then you know that is insane for me.  I’m lucky to wake up before 10:30 AM on weekends, and no earlier that 7:45AM during the week – and I’m not one bit happy about it!  I told myself I would only be willing to wait for one hour in line.  Any longer than that, and I would just go home.  I get to the Apple Store in Southlake, TX and start counting how far back I am.  The Apple store people come tell us they have 30 people ringing sales at about 7 minutes each.  Awesome, that should be about 1 hour!  4 and a half hours later… I get two new iPhone 4s (32 GB models).  Ugh.

So let’s begin…

The Design of the iPhone 4

It’s beautiful!  The glass front and back, solid black, with an aluminum band around the outside.  The buttons are metal and all recesses (speaker, microphones) are protected with a silver wire mesh.  This thing is gorgeous.  In fact, who couldn’t look at this thing and fall in love with it?  But Apple failed at elegant design with this thing, because elegant design is supposed to look nice and function well.  More on that later.

FaceTime

Apple is touting FaceTime as the biggest new feature of iPhone 4.  I have to disagree.  For me, the screen resolution and processor speed enhancements are by far the best new features – but FaceTime is a big deal – and it will change the way we communicate, but not today.  FaceTime is Apple’s video conferencing solution for mobile phones.  It’s incredible, but has two major flaws:

1) Right now, only iPhone 4s can video call with each other. FaceTime is based on open standards, and Apple said they are going to open the entire protocol to other vendors.  We’ll see over time if the adoption of other vendors takes off.

2) Wi-Fi only.  Leave it to AT&T to take something so life changing, and F#$K it up!  Can you imagine sitting at a store, calling your spouse and showing them a product or article of clothing before you buy it?  Yes, that’s awesome.  But you can’t do it today unless the store has free Wi-Fi and doesn’t block the FaceTime ports!  AT&T manages to fail at every opportunity you give those geniuses.

However, with all that said, I’ve used FaceTime a lot.  I love it!  It’s smooth, fluid, and high quality.  The audio and video are synced well, and it all around just works.  Great job on this Apple.

Facetime Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

Retina Display

With iPhone 4, Apple also introduced the Retina display.  The Retina display touts four times the number of pixels on previous generation iPhones, resulting in a 326 pixels per inch screen.

What can I say?  The Retina display is a home run!  The quality of the text, accuracy of the colors, and the wide viewing angle makes this screen brilliant!  Before I actually laid my eyes on this screen I thought to myself “the screen resolution won’t make much difference.”  Was I ever wrong…

When reading iBooks, or Kindle, or when browsing the web the increased resolution and sharpness of the fonts really takes away the eye strain and makes reading on this device a pleasure.  The small screen size becomes less of an irritant when the text is easy to read at any font size.

Big win here Apple!

Retina Display Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

Antenna in the Frame

When I first heard about the antenna in the frame I really thought this was genius.  On the iPhone 4, the frame of the phone doubles as the antenna and a structural backbone of the phone itself.  This allowed Apple to make the iPhone thinner, while packing it with yet more features .

It turns out, there is a bug in this design.  What’s not known is whether Apple knew about this or not before they shipped it.  What’s also not known is if they didn’t know about it, how is that possible?

The Antenna in the frame is in three distinct segments.  The left frame section is for Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and GPS.  The right frame section is for UMTS and GSM.  The bottom most frame section is not antenna, but completes the frame.  The problem is that when you ground the left antenna with the bottom base portion of the frame with your hand, your signal strength goes from 5 bars to one or none in a matter of a second.  Or does it?

When I first heard about this problem I couldn’t duplicate it.  I tried and tried to no avail.  I simply could not recreate it on either of my phones.  Finally I stumbled onto the problem.  My hands needed to be slightly moist.  I had just finished swimming in the pool.  I could easily recreate the problem on both phones.  Slide the phone into any case, and the problem disappears.

Steve Jobs’ Answer: “This is a non-issue.  Don’t hold it like that.”  My response: “Are you kidding me?”

Antenna in the Frame Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars

Conclusion

There’s a lot more to iPhone 4 than these three things.  In fact, there’s over a hundred new features in iPhone 4.

• Front Camera
• Rear 720p Video Camera with LED Flash
• Multi-tasking
• Folders
• Apple A4 Processor
• Noise Cancellation Microphone
• and a lot more!

So how do I rate the new iPhone 4?  I certainly think based on my personal usage and experience, that iPhone 4 is the best smartphone on the market – hands down.  It’s better than Droid.  It’s better than Microsoft.  But this phone is the 4th generation iPhone.  It shouldn’t have issues with the antenna.  Dropped calls and AT&T’s terrible network should have put this at the top of Apples quality control list.

So where does that leave us.  If Apple hadn’t messed up this antenna design I would have given the phone a solid 4.5 stars.  If Apple had dropped AT&T and moved to Verizon, even with the bad antenna design I would have found a way to make a six star rating.  But as it stands, I can only give the iPhone 4 a 4 star rating.  That’s a shame.  Because this is the best phone I’ve ever had.  Hands down.

Overall Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Ooma’s flagship product is the Ooma Telo.  The Telo provides the following features:

• VoIP Internet Phone Service
• Instant Second Line
• Up to four integrated handsets
• Traditional POTs interface for additional handsets
• Voicemail for each user
• Two phone numbers for free for Premium users ($9.99/month)
• One phone number for Standard users ($0/month free)
• Free long distance in the United States
• One time purchase price of $199
• Community telemarketer black lists
• Individual black lists
• A whole lot more!

I purchased my Ooma Telo from Bestbuy last week and I have to say I am super impressed.  Sure, there’s a few things that are bugging me, but as a soon to be former Vonage customer, I’m singing Ooma’s praises!

In order to install Ooma, you simply unpack the Telo (and any optional handsets that you purchased) and plug it into any port on your home switch or router.  Then you simply log on to http://my.ooma.com and create a new account.  Ooma’s website will ask for your serial number and a few other bits of information.  In less than two minutes, Ooma lights up and you can make and receive phone calls.  I was thrilled that the service lets you use their web interface to pick your phone numbers.  I picked three numbers all in a row (the third number is $4.99 a month extra) with the idea of using one for Fax, one for Home, and one for my Home Office.

I purchased my Telo with two handsets at Bestbuy.  I then opted for the free Handset at signup (which was delivered in two days by UPS).  The handsets are a little silly in their design, but work well and a feature packed.

So far, I am very impressed with the reliability and the call quality.  Now, to be fair, for those of you who don’t know I have some of the most rock solid Internet service on the planet.  I’m a Verizon FiOS business customer with 35/35 business class service.  I would love to hear feedback from some of you on slower, less reliable Internet connections.  Regardless, the Ooma quality has been fantastic.  I’ve not yet experienced the dreaded Vonage crackle (when packets get dropped, quality goes straight to hell quick on Vonage).  I’ve also sent several faxes without a single dropped call.  With Vonage at least 50% of my faxes had to retransmit.

Currently, my only complaint with Ooma has been their support people.  For the life of me I couldn’t figure out how to get my shared lines setup correctly.  I called Ooma support and got what I am sure is “Bob” from India.  He was zero help.  I tried asking my question in several different ways to no avail.  Finally I asked for a supervisor which took forever, but I am sure he was in America.  He was able to answer my question in a matter of seconds.  When are companies going to learn that it doesn’t save money to outsource to India????

If you’re looking to ditch your landline or Vonage service you can get Ooma Telo for FREE with Standard service or $9.99 for Premium.  The differences are negligible (extra number and voicemail) but regardless when compared to the price and features of Vonage or traditional landline service is well worth it!

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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My comment was basically this: “I found District 9 to be the worst movie that I have seen this year. ”

After further research, I continued to look at the other comments and they skewed 99% positive.  So I again posted my comment.  Deleted within 1 hour!  Later I asked a friend of mine to post a similar comment on the wall.  Deleted within 1 hour!

Well… I’ve decided to just re-post my comment every single hour and see what happens!

I guess this should be a lesson to all of us that you can’t trust everything you read in user forums or reviews… which most of us knew.  But it also appears you can’t trust Facebook fan pages either as they are being manipulated by the owners to make their product(s) more favorable.

We shouldn’t be surprised.

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I purchased this switch for my home as I was using an non-rack mount 8 port Gigabit D-Link switch. The D-Link switch was installed in a structured wiring panel in one of the closets of the house. I’ve needed to add additional ports for some time as I need to add an additional wireless access point (WAP) and two more Ethernet security cameras in the house. I decided to ditch the structured wiring panel for home networking (while keeping it for video) and order a 3U wall-mount rack from Rack Solutions.

My obstacle was finding a 16 port Gigabit switch that was rack mountable and quiet. Since this is an installation in a home I did not want to have to listen to a jet engine in my closet. I read several reviews of this switch on Amazon and other on-line stores that hinted at the switch being “very” noisy. However, according to the specification page at Linksys the switch was rated a 0db acoustic noise. This confused me greatly as the switch does have fans. I assumed the Linksys specifications were wrong, but decided to take a chance and buy the unit as it had all of the other features I needed. Plus, the price was right at $249 (Fry’s).

After getting the switch home and installing it, my fears came true. Linksys was wrong about their switch being 0db. However, my fears were quickly relieved as I realized the switch wasn’t very noisy at all. In fact, it was amazingly quiet for a switch of its size with two internal fans. After installing it in the closet and shutting the door, there isn’t the slightest bit of noise radiating from the room. I will however point out this switch would not be appropriate for a quiet office or desktop. It would drive me nuts in that arena, but for a closet, it is perfect.

One thing I should point out is that the picture on both the Linksys page and the NewEgg page which depict the rack mount brackets are incorrect. Since this switch is only 14 inches wide and a standard rack is 19 inches, the rack brackets are each 2.5″ in length to make up the difference. This doesn’t make any difference in functionality whatsoever, but is confusing when trying to determine the actual size of the switch itself (see picture to left).

As far as operation, the switch works flawlessly. It also supports jumbo frames which is great if you do lots of backups or file copies of large video or other media (you’ll need to enable jumbo frames on your computers too for this to make any difference).

One thing I really like about some of the new Linksys gear is the metal casing. This switch is rugged and will last a long time in a business environment. You won’t have to worry about it, just mount it on the wall and go.

UPDATE 9/28/2009: This switch failed after slightly over 2 years in operation.  It would show link when nothing was plugged in and refuse to pass traffic on random ports.

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The D-Link DI-604 was released by D-Link with functionality specifically designed for the home market and includes functionality for DHCP and uPnP, as well as code specifically implemented for Microsoft”s XBox and XBox Live. The D-Link DI-604 also includes a firewall and filtering implementation for filtering un-wanted sites. For example, you can filter any URL with the word “sex” in the URL as well as block the site www.sex.com explicitly. Another added functionality is IP Blocking based on the time of day (or permanently if you wish). This feature allows you to turn off your children”s Internet connection at 10:00pm if that were their bedtime.

The DI-604 is an Ethernet Broadband Router. What does that mean? It will allow you to share a single broadband internet connection among several devices. Not just your home PC and Notebook, but XBox, Playstation and VOIP phone too for example. If it’s an Ethernet enabled device, then you can plug it into the DI-604 and access your broadband Internet connection.

Another great feature of the DI-604 is the cable test feature. This feature is accessed via the web interface and allows you to test connectivity from the DI-604 to your devices and PCs. If your XBox can”t connect, the first thing you should do is run a cable test to see if the DI-604 sees your XBox. For first time users setting up their own home network, we find this feature to be invaluable.

The front of the DI-604 includes several status LEDs including Power, WAN and Link indicators for each of the four Ethernet ports (these are used for connecting your devices). If you have more than four devices you can plug any of these four ports into a existing or new Ethernet switch. The WAN port will be plugged into your Cable or DSL modem.

Installation of the DI-604 is simple. In fact, probably one of the most simple installations out there. Plug the WAN port into your ISPs modem and then all of your devices and/or computers into the four LAN ports.

You might be surprised, but in most cases, the DI-604 is smart enough to pick up the rest of your configuration and start serving your systems with Internet access. The only caveat is that your ISP will need to support DHCP. If your provider uses PPPoE or some other non-standard connectivity, just point your web browser at the DI-604″s management page (http://192.168.1.1 is the default) and select your ISP”s authentication preferences. For PPPoE you”ll need to enter your username and password (provided by your ISP).

Overall we rate the DI-604 with 5 stars and highly recommend it for home networks, especially where gaming is involved.

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The Stick acts as an auto-router listening for CNG Fax tones (the noises your fax machine makes when it is dialing out), touch tones and pulse tones to route an incoming call to the correct device.

This technology allows a small office or home office to send and receive faxes, connect with modems, and make and receive voice calls all on a single phone. The best part is that it is invisible to both the originator and the receiver of the call. This makes it an ideal solution for saving money as the Stick which costs as little as $85USD (one time cost) can offset the recurring cost of a $50 a month telephone or dedicated fax line. In the world of small business, every penny adds up.

The Stick works on a standard POTS (plain old telephone service) by listening for ring voltage and automatically answers the incoming call. After answering the line, the Stick listens for CNG and/or touch tones (DTMF). During this listening period (which is about 5 seconds) the caller hears a standard ringing sound (bell spec). Once the CNG tones are heard the call will be routed to the fax port, or after the timeout defaulted to the voice line 1 port. Outbound calls are routed on a first come, first served basis, and protected by a “barge -in” feature. The Stick is easily programmed by touch tones using a standard keypad on any telephone. The Stick is fully compatible with Caller-ID services and DSL services. And the best part is, if you aren’t technically savvy, just call their free technical support, they will program it for you, right over the phone.

This is one product your home office shouldn’t be without. We tested The Stick with Vonage VoIP services and Linksys PAP2 and found them to be compatible with no issues at all.

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